Executive Committee: Games
by chaleur
Summary: Mega Bomber Man, the Executive Committee way, and a bet.


**Games**   
by Alexandra Lucas   
kohlcrimson@hotmail.com   
An Executive Committee/ Araiso Private High fic

Author's Notes: Dedicated to sf, a corgi named Baron, the _Mega Bomber Man_ game and a mutual friend's Sega Genesis set.

The fat red man exploded in an electronic "BOOM" as Katsuragi came in, and she turned just in time to see Tokitoh raise a black-gloved fist in triumph. Beside him, Kubota put down his controller and sat back.

She sighed, walked over and kicked Tokitoh's chair solidly, not even bothering to scream at him. There was only so much righteous anger you could summon up when you had succumbed to the thing of evil yourself only yesterday. Katsuragi eyed the Sega Genesis set that had mysteriously found its way into the Executive Committee's headquarters, and rued the day it had been confiscated from a hapless student. Then she pulled up a chair to watch.

'Victory!' said the screen, and a tiny white man and black clockwork one danced in synchronized joy.

Tokitoh didn't even look up. "Yo, Katsuragi," he said by way of greeting and fiddled with the controls. A level filled with pink smiley faces flickered up. His eyes took on a distinctly manic gleam. "Excellent," he muttered, rubbing his hands together in glee, and dodged Katsuragi's vengeful fist.

"Hmm," went Kubota, picking up his controller again. "Would you like to bet on this one?"

"What kind of bet?"

"Whoever dies first sweeps the Committee room floor for a week," Katsuragi immediately piped up. Both of them ignored her.

"The usual stakes," said Kubota mysteriously.

"Hmph," Tokitoh replied, flicking one quick glance at Kubota. "You're on."

The next few minutes were filled with nothing but the sound of electronic bombs going off, and the rapid breathing of both combatants. Kubota's character walked deliberately into a square labeled with a skull and immediately began changing several sickly shades of green. He began zooming around the screen, laying bombs everywhere he went. In a flurry of explosions, the screen lit up and when the smoke cleared, there was nothing left in the maze but a little black clockwork man, who lifted his hands in victory.

Tokitoh turned to Kubota, furious, "That's not fair!"

"You need to pay more attention to what's happening around you, Tokitoh." Kubota was implacably calm.

Tokitoh snarled, and snatched up his controller from where he had thrown it in disgust.

Round 1: Kubota - 1, Tokitoh - 0 

The next round, the white man had successfully trapped the old green man and was working his way around the maze. Tokitoh was hunched over his controller, smirking, confident of winning with his firepower and purple Louie. Across the screen, the black clockwork man jumped on a blue Louie, walked up to the wall and kicked a bomb into it. It skipped off one side of the screen, appeared on the opposite side, and landed neatly right next to Tokitoh, cutting off his only route of escape. "Argh!" went Tokitoh, "Boom!" went the bombs, and his character died in a fiery four-way inferno.

Round 2: Kubota - 2, Tokitoh - 0

By Round 15, word had gotten round, and there was a betting pool going on outside the committee door. The rest of the EC members pacified Katsuragi with promises of a hefty donation being made to the committee funds from the winnings. She was keeping score, doodling ideas for new equipment, most of them highly improbable.

The score was Kubota - 9, Tokitoh - 6, but only because the old green man kept committing suicide by trapping both his and Kubota's characters. 

When the score was 16-13, Kubota walked past Tokitoh's character and cheerfully infected him with the Opposite disease. Tokitoh perished in the middle of shouting curses at Kubota and trying to flip his controller over in his hands.

At five o'clock in the afternoon, Kubota was leading by a seventeen game margin, which lengthened by one when he ran past Tokitoh and laid a series of five bombs, trapping him in the middle. The rest of the EC had left some time ago, having called an end to the betting pool and collected the winnings, sometimes forcibly, from the student body. Katsuragi was happily counting the money in the corner when Tokitoh threw down the controller, swore loudly, got up and stomped past her on the way to the door. She lifted her head to see Kubota turning off the TV and rolling the cords of the controls neatly out of the way.

"You're finished, then," she said, getting up and stretching the kinks out of her back.

"It appears so," Kubota replied mildly, picking up his and Tokitoh's bags, and she stared at him curiously.

"Won't he be mad at you?," she asked.

"Probably." He headed for the door.

Bewildered, she stared for another moment and hurriedly gathered up her things. "Well, I've got the money, let's all go out for dinner or something to celebrate."

"I don't think Tokitoh's really in the mood for socializing. Some other time."

"Where are you going then?," she asked, stuffing notebooks into her bag, and she lifted her eyes in time to catch the gleam of Kubota's smile as he slid open the door and looked back, silhouetted for a moment against the setting sun.

"To collect my winnings," he smiled, and closed the door with the hand holding Tokitoh's bag.

Story copyright of Alexandra Lucas © 2002 


End file.
